unlock with watch does not work on Sonoma

I had the issue as well. I rebooted my mac, rebooted my phone and watch. I logged out and back into iCloud. None of this seemed to help. Then, I disconnected my 2 external displays, and did the setup again, "within Touch ID and Password" -- this time, it worked. I would suggest making sure your iMac does not have any other devices connected to it.

Good Luck.

This worked for me too. I only had to disconnect my external display, and unlock with Watch started working right away without having to go into settings to turn anything on and off. Reconnected my display and it continues to work, at least for now.

It's beyond me why the two might be connected but glad to have a solution.

All I had to do was turn the option off (Settings > Touch ID & Password > Apple Watch) and then back on again. I did that with the watch on the charger, I had to wear the watch and enter the code, after a few seconds, the Mac acknowledged the watch and it now unlocks the Mac.

netrox wrote:

I have two Apple watches - S6 and S7.

I have iMac (5K, 27-inch, 2020) with two user accounts on my Mac. They share the same identity (same icloud username) but different "profiles" - one is for personal and one is for work.

The unlock Mac with watch does not work. I did toggle and they did "re-sync" successfully but when I fast-switch accounts, it doesn't unlock automatically requiring me to manually type my passwords.

On an important note: it's a pattern that happens every time I upgrade. It should update all the information needed to unlock Apple devices connected to the watch immediately. It would literally take at least a month for it to "get" it and auto unlock after countless "hacks" resorted to try to force MacOS to unlock with my watch.

I just feel like the unlock feature is often overlooked by Apple when it comes to upgrading watches/iphones/MacOS and I suspect the unlock started working after updates were subsequently applied.

verify your software is up to date…

Update your Apple Watch

About watchOS 6 Updates

About watchOS 7 Updates

To be proactive you can file a bug report /submit your Apple Feedback here: Product Feedback - Apple

I have an Apple watch SE, with the latest updates. It would unlock my MacBook Pro and only very occasionally prompt me for a password or touch ID in order to enable the watch to unlock. Since updating to Sonoma 14.4.1, it requires password or touch ID every time, supposedly to enable the watch to unlock, but it never lets the watch do it. Checked settings, and unlock with watch is enabled. A mystery. It should not be required to disconnect and reconnect or resync or whatever just to enable this functionality to continue to work.

Apple Watch series6 with os 10.3.1 will not unlock Mac running Sonoma 14.3.1

Hopefully, Apple will fix its software. For users to keep rebooting, plugging, and unplugging monitors is an impractical solution to a software glitch.